EG: When I was 15 there was a dark room at my school. It struck me right away. I loved taking photographs. Around the same time, I started doing journalism for a regional newspaper, often regarding culture and the arts. I've adapted several aspects of working methods I discovered through journalism in my artistic practice. Journalism was also a way to meet artists, and to see what it meant to work as a professional in the arts. I did not know what that was like, because I didn't grow up around artists. Journalism turned out to be a perfect excuse to get into people's studios!

Gleditsch further elaborates on his approach to photography and the subject matter he generally looks for in his artistic practice.

EG: Often my work relates to events or objects from the past, which is kind of a paradox for a photographer. Photography is very good at documenting the present, but not an obvious medium for dealing with the past and negotiating with it.

KS: Given that, how do you choose your subject matter; what do you seek?

EG: Often it feels like it chooses me. I find some point of interest and I start digging and digging. In the fringe of exploring one topic, another point of interest arises. That would be a typical leap from one project to the next for me.

Gleditsch elaborates on the photographic series mmmMarbles which precedented the newly conceived works that are to be exhibited at the Enter Art Fair in Copenhagen, for the first time. In 2022 he captured the sculptures of the Parthenon frieze in the British museum; he explains that the gradients he applied to the frame glass in front of the photographs derive from pigments found in the drapery folds and creases of the sculptures. Because of a destructive restoration on the sculptures in the 1930s there are now were few traces left of original colours of the canonized sculptural group. The attempt of making the frieze pristine white failed twice, as the Pentelic marble is veined and not uniformly white to begin with, furthermore, the surface reflected the self-willed wish of museum’s benefactor Lord Duveen and alas swayed the color out of the discourse when it comes to the antique sculpture and appropriated the material to suit the Italian Renaissance ideal of the brilliantly white marble. Gleditsch pursued his interest in a similar context at capturing three classical Greek and Roman marble sculptures: a young man, a niobid and Amor wearing the helmet of Mars in the Glyptotek in Copenhagen.

KS: Let’s talk a bit more about the colors, here. The translucency accompanying the works is interesting; you can see through it, but the expressiveness of the work would be completely different if without it. Could you tell us more about the conceptual premise of the gradiented colors?

EG: The colored gradients are printed on the frame glass in front of the photograph. The colors are from conservational studies on classical Greek and Roman sculptures, from pigment traces found on the sculptures. I first worked with a similar approach in the series Faded Remains with transparent gradients. In the series mmmMarbles I included white semi-transparent gradients that partly obstruct the photograph. I wanted the surface of these works to be really tactile and almost delicious! And I liked the idea of reintroducing in the work the concept of whiteness getting in the way of the Parthenon sculptures. I wanted this obstructing white that would obstruct parts of the image or stand in the way.

KS: It's like a frosted glass. You can't understand what's on the other side. Also, it brings a very specific depth to the images.

EG: It looks almost three-dimensional. Regarding the chromatic gradients, it was never about reuniting the colors and the sculptures. It is more about making the color accessible as a filter you view the work through. Making that story apparent in a discreet and nondescriptive way. The blue gradient in several of the photographs in the mmmMarbels series for instance is based on rare traces of Egyptian blue, found deep inside a fold of a sculpture where the conservators of the 1930s didn't manage to get to with the harsh metal tools.

KS: That is very interesting. As a photographer you go from objecthood to the surface. With this series, you photograph ‘other people's artworks’, which gained the distance from the authors, their ownership and intellectual property over the course of time. This transition is very interesting to me. What does that offer you as an artist?

EG: Taking something man-made as a point of departure is something I have been doing a lot. It's all about the history ingrained in the object, whether it is an artwork or architecture. How events and objects from the past have been understood and disseminated over time intrigues me. Narratives, often historical but also contemporary ones, are the point of departure for most of my work. I have always had an interest for stories and what roles they play in our life.

We further talk about the conditions that determine Gleditsch’s photography practice; his manner of work on the terrain disaffected by the research and the role of intuition.

KS: How planned are your photographs? What do you leave to coincidence, if anything?

EG: I leave quite a bit to coincidence. Before I photograph, I research extensively. I'm very much in this idea-based conceptual world in my studio. On the other hand, when I go out to photograph, I never really know what I'm going to get – the reality that meets me there. How are the objects staged within the room, what are the lighting conditions?

I try to let go of the research, that brought me to the location. I try to suppress the researcher or the conceptual artist, if you may, and just, let the photographer get into play. Into a more intuitive mode of working.

KS: Even with intuition, that is uncontrolled and subconscious – it came to be because of one’s unique experiences and skills that they acquired through time.

EG: Of course. Every single image I've ever made is a part of that intuition. For me, the act of photography is intuitive, but it's never random. There's a series of decisions that made me go there and point my camera towards something. What brought me there was by no means intuitive, but the photographic process is very much.

KS: As your work is heavily research focused, should your works always be accompanied by text?

EG: The visual reality of the work is a crucial aspect for me. I try to make works that are not only conceptually interesting, but more importantly also visually complex. The works need to be able to survive on their own, stripped of all text and background information. Whether it's on a museum wall, in a gallery or over someone's couch.

KS: By your standards, what would you describe as a successful photograph?

EG: It can be very difficult for me to describe in a meaningful way why one photograph works while another does not. I am not saying that it can’t be pursued, but the attempt will often be a less precise and less interesting description than the photographic work itself. I believe this is what Duchamp was on to when he coined the term “the art coefficient”: the missing link between what the artist intended to create and what was finally created. Or way better phrased by Duchamp himself as the “arithmetical relation between the unexpressed but intended and the unintentionally expressed”.

KS: If I may follow up on the images that ‘don’t work’ necessarily; what lies in your archives? The work that doesn’t get published.

EG: I often work with long-term projects that are made to be exhibited at a specific space. But I also have projects though, on the back burner that I'm just constantly doing, for myself. I have a few places I seek out and photograph regularly for example, of which I have no intention of showing.

Gleditsch elaborates on his views of the role that photography holds in our day and age, and how he developed his own confidence and voice as an artist.

EG: We live in an era of the image where everyone is a photographer. We not only understand the world through images, we also construct the world through images. Images offer a direct connection to parts of us that bypass rational thinking and language.

KS: Do you have a photographer’s work in mind that influenced you the most?

EG: When I was in my early twenties and discovered the Danish artist, Joachim Koester, his work blew my mind. He was working in an investigative method as an artist and a photographer with complex narratives, negotiating with themes that were difficult to manifest photographically. I remember seeing for the first time his project The Kant walks where he travelled with his 4x5” camera to Kaliningrad, home town of the philosopher Immanuel Kant (at the time known as Königsberg), Kant barely left his native city during his entire life, and when he did his farthest travel was to the town of Arnsdorf 96 km away. Kant was famous for the regularity of his habits, including his daily walks. Koester traced Kants walks on a historic map of German Königsberg and juxtaposed the traced route on a contemporary map of the now rebuilt Russian/post-Soviet city of Kaliningrad. Koester literally follows in Kants footsteps, but in a completely different version of the city. A series of medium size color photographs depict the unremarkable urban landscape of the post-Soviet city. It has nothing to do with Kant, but everything to do with Kant. The way he worked blew my mind.

KS: As this conversation draws to a close, I am interested in asking are there any new directions you're wanting to take in your artistry? What are you working on?

EG: I'm working on a show that's opening spring 2025 as a solo presentation for the National Museum in Oslo. My point of departure for the project is the intricate and intimate connections between modernist architecture and the architecture of tuberculosis sanatoria that preceded it.

Interview by Katarina Snoj

Photography by Kari Kjøsnes

August 2024, Oslo